diamond dust
by impracticality
Summary: • without you, he glitters more—ace&baron. •


**||diamond dust**

x•x•

At first, you think you love her, because this girl is amazing, and she's like gunpowder, beautiful and explosive and dead as dust beneath your fingertips. And you _want _to love her, because she's the only girl who's ever looked at you twice.

Then she melts — carbon into diamonds — and runs like death is on her heels, and it is not you she runs to.

You've never liked Dan, not really. You like him less when he's blushing and perturbed and awkward, and she's crying into his chest because she _missed him_ and now they're together again, and you just know they both have completely different ideas of the word. And you're just all _over _that; why haven't you realized until now that Mira Clay's just not that girl? You should have realized when she was kissing him through the phone and talking to him with telepathy.

You know that you never loved her, but you loved the idea of her — a gung-ho small-scale celebrity who could send your heart aflutter from a wink behind her sunglasses, who chose you because you were angry at the world and tired of everything, and because you could fight until there was blood on your hands.

Mira's definitely not that girl.

Her life goes on without you, and that's okay. You don't really care anymore.

But you swear that the base needs thicker walls, because you really didn't need to hear her 'educating' Dan about what a real relationship is supposed to involve when she thinks everyone else is asleep.

x•x•

Baron's annoying you again.

He calls you 'Ace.' Just 'Ace,' without any overdramatic honorifics tacked on (and you ignore the fact that even this implies a certain amount of intimacy), even though you've saved his sorry ass enough times for you to own his soul. But why should you want him fawning over you; how is it any less undesirable than the degrading praise he lavishes on others?

He addresses the humans with titles like they're fucking diplomats or something, and they treat him like the stupid kid he is. Julie, in particular, stops batting her eyelashes at you to giggle in delighted amusement at Baron making an idiot out of himself by gushing over her like she's the queen of Vestal.

You decide maybe he's good for something.

x•x•

He tastes oddly sweet, and smells like summertime, and you really don't need to know this.

"What the hell did you do that for?" You snap, eyes flashing as you shove him with enough force to send him crashing to the floor (beneath you, where he belongs—).

His eyes are very wide and very blue, and he looks upset and shocked and ashamed all at once. "I-I didn't _mean_ to!" he exclaims in a trembling voice, and you're inclined to believe him, against your better judgement. Because he's Baron, and he can't be more than twelve, and you're in a bored mood today so you don't want to have to break his face.

He's still sitting there, legs bent awkwardly, eyes tearing up — _damn it no don't cry_.

"Get up," you sigh, "You don't want Dan to see you like this, do you?"

"Master Dan doesn't look at anyone but Mira these days," he says with a pout, actually _serious_, and that alone is enough to make you come closer to laughing than you have in a long time. You wait for him to stand on his own, and eventually he does.

He's looking at you warily, like he's worried you're going to hit him again. You look back and wonder how a kid who was forced to grow up too fast can still have such clear naivety in his eyes — twice-fooled lavender, frost-bitten yet hopeful.

"…And I'm really sorry!" You wonder if he was speaking, and reason that you block him out by reflex nowadays. You're already turning away when you ask him to repeat himself.

"I…tripped," he responds with some effort, preoccupied with the floor. He's blushing, and somehow you feel like the bad guy now.

"Yeah, whatever." You dismiss the matter mostly because you _never want to speak of it again, ever_, and you watch him light up at your admittance of forgiveness. He's too damn happy at the drop of a hat, and you realize something.

He's not like those lonely hearts who'd become acquainted with the pains of life too early. He's not like you. He doesn't understand you.

But if understanding you means Baron has to suffer through that kind of aloneness, let him be. Agony doesn't quite suit him either.

x•x•

She's flying and those other tethered spirits can't even come _close_.

They try, though. She runs across sheet-metal like she's running for her life, and, again, it's Dan who's there with her, though she's just out of his reach.

You let yourself grin emptily because he can't keep up with her. The grin fades away when you see Baron watching, not falling in step with them like the fool he is. It's the way his expression looks; it's gotta be the light, you tell yourself, but he's not bright and effervescent like he should be. His wings are clipped.

You aren't gentle. So it's not a surprise when he rubs his arm with a pout, looking at you in perplexity. "Ow! Why'd you push me?"

You nod towards the running pair, so close to the throne room and yet so far. "What are you waiting for? Go after them."

He's staring at you, and there's a flicker of something in his eyes you can't quite name. "Nah," he says at last, betraying his serious tone with a good-natured smile. "That's okay. We'll catch up, right?" And without waiting for you to reply, he takes a step forward.

For the first time in your life, you don't have anything patronizing to say to him. Here is one instance where Baron's crushed your spirit, not the other way around.

x•x•

It hurts to think about him, now. He's caught and you are too — except you're tangled up in barbed wire and he's tangled up in candy floss. You really hate that, how he can make suffering sweet with the gossamer gloze of innocence.

You should actually be quite happy, more happy than you've ever managed to pretend to be, anyway. Because Mira's gilded the whole world and the only worries on the horizon are those storming in your own pinprick of the universe.

The worst part is that it's refreshing, to not have to make-believe like you're living with a soul. And you don't have to fake being guilty or wear plastic masks.

You remember there was a time when you thought of her like gunpowder, like charcoal stains that only set in more when you try to erase them. The girl who didn't cry when she was shoved aside.

If she's gunpowder, he's sand. She was there a moment, then gone - and the only thing left of her is light-bursts on the horizon. But he's warm and golden and he didn't fade with time; you can't forget him.

You want to. Desperately, achingly, with all your defective heart, you _want to —_

Because without you, he glitters more.


End file.
